Sputterpub's Blog

I knew we were headed for sex days before we did it. We chatted while we worked and we flirted while we chatted. So even though some of our conversation was about his wife and three kids and about my husband and baby, most of it was full-body language about him being male and me being female. I was made to understand he found me beautiful. I became convinced that some of what I liked least about me actually appealed most to him. He loved that I was a mother; he said he didn’t want a girl.

His fucking was not exceptional but Cisco really knew how to hug. The first time we did it we were standing up in the new-painted bathroom, and he managed somehow to embrace me fully, chest to hip, while his thrusting pelvis made sweet pressure against mine, and his small erect penis poked.

The second time we had more time. Mark had taken Aggie to the zoo for the afternoon and I felt secure for at least an hour. Cisco and I talked more, intimately, and he almost flattered me enough to put me on top. But I had seen my hanging-forward face; there was no way I’d assume that position. We fucked missionary style after elaborate foreplay, and once again I was most impressed by the man’s ability to scoop me up fully between his big forearms. I felt hugged instead of humped.

The last time we did it I climbed up on Cisco and let me all hang down. He reached up for my dangling cheeks and pulled my face to his wet smiling mouth. He murmured to me how gorgeous I was while I came to nice agreement with his prick. Even afterwards he called me luscious.

He left when the window work was done. That was all we ever expected; in fact, I was surprised when he returned one Monday afternoon a few weeks later, to ask if we were satisfied with his work. I told him yes of course and sent him on his way, and only later realized that he smelled like beer, and that he knew Mark always worked on Monday afternoons, and that he’d probably dropped by, boylike opportunistically, just to see what might transpire.

I didn’t tell Mark about Cisco’s visit. I remember we had a peaceful dinner that night and then I took a bath with Aggie. We were in one of our seasons of drought and water rationing, and bathing with my toddler was a way for me to take a bath myself; otherwise we grownups were advised to shower in short efficient bursts. I’d created a little ritual with Aggie, where I got in the tub first and then she climbed in and lay face-up on my lap and legs with her head against my belly, so she became EIGGA, with a toothy forehead and bottom-lashed eyes. EIGGA was strange compared to Aggie, but by squinting a little I could adapt to her and see her beauty, while EIGGA in turn giggled non-stop, with the top of her upsidedown face bubbling in merriment.

There I was, leaning over my obversed daughter and it finally hit me, or floated out above me like a lightbulb igniting, that Aggie was seeing me not only upsidedown but hanging down, and she was loving what she saw. I can’t convey my epiphany as profound – it wasn’t – but it along with the memory of Cisco served to get me over my life-wasting reluctance.

I’m not saying I’m healed. I still avoid looking downward at my reflection, whether in a pond or a purse mirror. But I see that bath as a turning point for me, when I began to like a different kind of diversity. And it was the first time I learned from my child.

Not long after that I found myself possessed with a powerful desire to charm Mark. I’d been thinking a lot about his body and pleasure and babies. One Sunday afternoon while Aggie napped I looked at him and felt like it, and I took him to our bed. I laid him down and stripped myself, and then I climbed on him and began a horizontal dance. My face was hanging above him when he exploded silly/proud.

The first time I looked down at myself in a mirror I was snorting cocaine, and the view wasn’t bad. Sure I was gazing up my own nostrils, with a coiled $20 bill distended from one, but my skin was still prevailing against gravity, so the perspective was odd but the face wasn’t. I was twenty years old.

The next eight years saw changes. I graduated from college, married Mark, and we bought our first (fixer-upper) house. Then we had Aggie and started the fixing up. Actually, we stripped the black-and-white vinyl tile out of the entryway when we first moved in, and we power-sanded and Varathaned the entryway floor and the one in our bedroom. Then I got pregnant. We didn’t plan that but it felt like we should go with it. And of course I never regretted her. But she sure brought changes. It hadn’t seemed so serious, getting married or buying real estate. Nothing felt permanent; there were always other options; if need be I could take some consequences and change my choice. As moved as I was when Aggie was born, as awed as I became when I watched her discover the world, it wasn’t till she was about a year and a half that I realized I’d been trapped. It no longer mattered how open I was about my past or how earnestly I argued my ideas; someone could actually get at me and hurt me, through her.

About then she was old enough for us to start on the bathroom. We spackled and sanded and painted and curtained and ornamented and personalized the space from yellowy beige to sparkling blue and white, and though we had to live with it disordered for nearly three months while we worked on it around our day jobs and Aggie, we were very pleased with it at last.

Before we were done we bought an unfinished wooden medicine chest to hang above the sink. It had a mirror on its door and four shelves inside, and we painted it white. We also set it, mirror-up, on the bed in the spare room while we prepared the bathroom walls. For the better part of a week I had to go to that room in the morning and lean over the mirror in order to see my face or hair.

Well that was my first aging shock. Two years before my thirtieth birthday (when according to my cousin a woman’s upper arm will begin to sag over her elbow, no matter who she is), I leaned over and saw my hanging face in that mirror, and at first I leapt back in horror at the sight.

My cheeks … bagging around my mouth and nose, foretelling the lines that twenty more years would etch. My eyelids … pouching intimations of incipient drag. The pluckable fuzz above my nose that would be exchanged, too soon, for gnarly long brow hairs cobwebbing above my eyes.

I felt so trapped and unattractive I had a mean affair.

His name was Francisco, and my husband brought us together. We’d reached the window replacement portion of our fixing up and we decided not to try to do that ourselves. Cisco was a glazier; he was the tradesman Mark found. Since I was in charge of wall decor it was appropriate for me to follow Cisco around the rooms with rotten windows, priming and painting behind him.

He wasn’t at all my type. He was short and powerfully built, barrel-like, and it turned out that his penis was neither pretty nor impressive. Mark was tall, not-fat, and comparatively well hung. We’d had an active creative sex life back when we weren’t tired all the time. Lately it seemed we were just partners in parenting and pals at pastimes. We never had the energy for flattery; we never had the time for exploratory kisses.

Cisco wasn’t circumcised. His organ looked like a cow’s teat when it was flaccid, and erect it didn’t amount to much either. At first I briefly wondered if I’d even be able to feel it

On top of those, there developed the issues of Kelly’s weight, Kevin’s headaches, and Peg’s bones. It’s obvious to me even if not to Dr. H that Kelly grew fat to irk Peg, and Kevin’s sport- and job-preventing headaches served as excuses to avoid everything that Jim advised, urged, demanded.

Peg broke her right wrist when she slipped on the Bay Ridge trail. That was weird; anyone else would have maybe sustained a sprain. She and Jim were about halfway through a level weekend walk and she had the bad luck to fall just wrong. That injury slowed her at work more than at home. I discussed osteoporosis with her but she said she tested normal.

A few years later she and Jim were working in the garden one Saturday and Peg’s ankle broke. The orthopedic surgeon said she again fell exactly wrong. She missed more work and her habits became even laxer.

Our friendship flagged of course. When we lunched together we mostly talked business. God I grew to hate those lunches, with me begging for any kind of help, despising her. She always ate white food – potatoes, Caesar salad, mayonnaise – and she invariably spoke with her small mouth full, a glob of bad white caught in the corner.

To the extent she discussed her marriage she reported it good. She enjoyed Jim’s company, she said, and the sex was as great as ever. I didn’t believe it. Her face said otherwise, tighter and twitchier all the time.

I guess it was inevitable that we’d squabble when the business failed. Even though we both understood it was her mistakes as much as the law changes that did us in, even though she never argued when I asserted that she’d been overpaid, she came after me for money. Or Jim did. I don’t imagine she argued with him either. And when I saw that my name wasn’t spelled right on the demand letters, I knew Peg hadn’t even read them.

I remember now that odd conversation we had on her last day in the office. We didn’t know then it would be her last day, that Jim wouldn’t let her come back. Cash flow had been bad – for the first time ever I’d delayed her draw as well as my own – and after lunch she came to my desk begging for her check. She promised she wouldn’t cash it; she just needed to be able to say she had it. “Or what?” I asked before thinking. She hesitated for a moment with a trapped look in her eyes, and then she muttered something about peace in the kitchen and no one stomping out of rooms. I thought about bones.

I might have been able to salvage something out of the business if I hadn’t spent all my energy on the lawsuit. And Peg and Jim might have salvaged their marriage – even though they got some money they also got slapped over and over with how incompetent she was at work and he was at representing her, and as the illusions fell the veils were stripped away from their home life too.

I used to say everything bad that happened to me turned out to be good. Now it isn’t so. Or not exactly. Now it’s more like the badder gets the gooder. Because Peg got the worst of it. Her marriage collapsed and her relationship with both of her kids has suffered. And yet …

Her move to Rohnert Park is actually looking good. I can’t imagine living there but it’s her home turf; it must be working for her. Her new job has energized her and living alone seems to be bringing her back to herself. She doesn’t deserve it but she appears to be happy.

I had an escape route. I could retreat into my house and use the old transcription skills. Put in the hours I want and make enough. But it’s not working for me yet.

I lucked into the connection with Dr. H. Seems I’m developing a specialty in transcription for psychiatrists and my clientele is now ranging into Solano county, but what were the odds of getting Peg’s shrink?

Not that I agree with some of his assessments, but it’s interesting to hear them. As far as I’m concerned I’m not breaching any confidentiality deals. Peg broke all those herself.

No, I do okay here and I’m sure I’ll be happier once I complete this. It’s giving me a perspective on the course of my own events. I’ll finish it and then I think I’ll take a walk. I can do that. Just because I haven’t doesn’t mean I can’t. It’s easy to order in, and I’ve been busy.

Contrary to what my brother said last week, I can do it. And I know it’s been awhile, but I doubt it’s the months he claims. I just haven’t had the time or the need.

Besides, I feel safer here. And I don’t appreciate his nagging me about it. I need to take care of myself. It’s clear no one else will. So I have to set limits. I won’t read his e-mails. And I’m sure as hell not going to answer the phone. Not till I feel better.

Peg stayed home with Kelly only three weeks. Then she started part-time in my office. There was never any doubt that she’d be a responsible, caring, diligent mother. It was more a matter of feeling relatively unsuited. Peg wasn’t a good cook or a smart housekeeper, and as she said herself, she was no Nurse Nancy. Home time irritated her, and she’d rather be patient and loving with Kelly for six hours a day than edgy and anxious with her for fourteen.

That was fine with Jim. He was around most of the time anyway, and he was besotted with his daughter. From the moment he held her he felt a connection more profound than any he had ever imagined. He was fascinated by everything about her, and he soon built a bond with Kelly that Peg would have had difficulty entering even if she wanted to.

But she didn’t. Peg properly discharged her duties as mother and wife but she got her gratification from the office. There she solved problems and received kudos. At home she felt adequate but not successful.

That’s when the Whiteheads began going to church. My once-agnostic friend not only started attending every Sunday; she went to the Wednesday pot luck meetings too, and she even signed Kelly up for the preschool program.

That’s also when Peg stopped shaving her privates. She and Jim were as exhausted as any new parents; they couldn’t find time for sex. Jim took to masturbating again. He fell asleep at that once, and Peg came downstairs after awhile to discover him snoring on the couch, Levis around his ankles and diaper-clad hand around his dick, which image did nothing to revive her desires.

They only found the time to do it when they went away. If it hadn’t been for Jim’s parents’ willingness to take Kelly, they might never have made her a sibling. But Kevin was born when Kelly was four.

And the family regained some symmetry. Peg was flooded with all the love that hadn’t come to her with Kelly. It was as if her original maternal passion had been locked up somewhere and the son-triggered labor found that place, loosed it, and deluged her with a double dose of connection. Her soul expanded. She promised that baby every good.

Maybe Jim’s parental passion was already spent. Maybe he just reacted to Peg’s overreaction, the way I become crazy-generous in the presence of a tightwad. He felt responsibility and interest and satisfaction in his son, but he just didn’t warm to the kid the way he had to Kelly.

Meanwhile Peg was still valuable in the office. We neither knew it then, but that was just before she began to slide. We hired a few support employees and I never noticed her move away from substance and toward supervising. We both had kids and domestic demands on us and we stood in for each other frequently, and although I knew she was getting more from that arrangement than I was, I didn’t see then how lopsided it was.

Peg’s family got sick more than mine so she missed work. They had problems and went to doctors all the time. Like when Jim got the mysterious stomach pains. Kaiser never diagnosed the problem; he suffered or at least complained for almost two years before it subsided. Peg had to run home more during those months.

Or when Kelly got molested. That was a bona fide tragedy, requiring substantial counseling and even a change of church. I remember my shock at the time: learning how common it is in the church environment, for the simple reason that many marginal individuals find “control” in the church, so they hang around for that control, and then when they relapse (for the rate of relapse is much higher than the rate of successful control), there they are, trusted among the vulnerable.

Now there’s another slant on that story. As I transcribe Dr. H’s notes I see it in a different light. There’s no question that the guy who ran the after-school group should not have taken those pictures. But I always wondered why the church didn’t support the Whiteheads more at the time … why it was necessary for them to find a new church. Hearing and typing now, slowing my fingers to take in the words, I think about the hyper-close relationship between Jim and Kelly, about the gap between mother and daughter … did that dynamic set the little girl up to cooperate with the church perv? Yech.

Jim Whitehead at 23 was short, smart, and always horny. Sex was his favorite activity and he went for it every chance he got.

When was the miracle age between the introduction of the Pill and the advent of AIDS. Where was the venue of college – San Francisco State in fact – so there was no dearth of opportunity.

Jim wasn’t handsome but he was cute enough, and he knew how to talk smart and loom studly. Before he met Peg he knocked up three girlfriends and sired two sons. He had even been married once, because the first pregnancy and birth occurred in high school and all the parents made them. They never lived together though, and that baby was put up for adoption after all. The other son, James Whitehead Jr., was raised by his single mother. Jim’s support obligation was $85 a month, which he paid, but he never got to know the boy.

There was something about Peg, or maybe just about the season in Jim’s life, that made him stop tomcatting. He met her his last semester in college, seduced her, cleaved unto her, and proposed marriage.

She was no more beautiful than he was handsome. She had thick blondish hair but that wasn’t uncommon. She was short and well-proportioned – “more than a handful,” Jim used to say – with a trim ankle and foot. But her posture was atrocious, her skin was freckled, and her mouth was small and tight. All of which features were okay with Jim. He saw her curved back as vulnerability, and the freckles and tiny mouth were markers for youth which, truth to tell, really turned Jim on.

Some latently gay guys go for boyish women. Some with pedophiliac tendencies like them girlish instead.

Jim married Peg with all the celebration that his first wedding lacked. It was a church affair well-guested by both families. The bride wore white and the only eccentric feature was her attendant. She had girlfriends of course, and three of them served as bridesmaids, but her maid of honor was a man of honor, her best friend Nick. They’d been pals (mostly Platonic) since high school, and Peg couldn’t imagine going through the ritual without him.

It was a fine wedding and a fun honeymoon. Jim and Peg ran a vigorous bedroom, and their kinkiness flowered at the adult all-inclusive Jamaican resort. That’s where Peg first let Jim tie her up. That’s when he shaved her pubes – “the better to find you, my dear” – and Peg enjoyed the airiness enough to continue the style for some years.

Marriage didn’t change them immediately. Jim stayed in school and Peg went to work, which they each would have done anyway. Peg and Nick enjoyed a final fling of non-Platonism before their old friendship faded. Jim never found out.

The young Whiteheads flourished those first five years. Peg made decent money at her bank job and Jim did okay with investments. They bought a home (a Daly City condo) and acquired a small boat. They traveled when they could. They drank easily. They had excellent sex. Jim was the oldest of five sons and two daughters, so he saw the Playboy magazines before his father learned how to hide them well, and he carried serious lingerie fantasies from those early visions. Peg had the love and the legs to wear garter belts. There are probably still some Polaroids around from that era.

No, the decline occurred with reproduction. Peg got accidentally pregnant and then miscarried, and those events made them realize how much they wanted children. They conceived again, deliberately, some seven months later, and they told no one till Peg began the second trimester. Then they began to get excited.

They moved to Vallejo. They bought a house and painted the baby’s room before their own. Three months later Peg was delivered of a plump perfect daughter.

Kelly was pink-skinned, golden-fuzzed, with deep blue eyes and exquisite toes, but Peg felt nothing for her. The maternal urges didn’t bloom. Even four days after, when her milk began abundant flow, Peg sat with her babe in arms, calmly gazing at the upturned face, savoring the uterine twitch and release as the sucking triggered her let-down reflex, but she felt no passion, no lust to protect. The retrospective diagnosis was postpartum depression, and of course there’s no ignoring hormones, but I’m sure there was a giant shadow cast by Peg’s mother: dead when Peg was 20, their unresolved issues scattered like her ashes.